Knowing your Baby Monitor Safety Features

Parents who would like to provide the best safety and security for their babies purchase baby monitors so they can keep watch over their little ones even at night. Baby monitors, which can be either audio only or video-enabled, helps parents do other chores while their baby is napping.

This is because they can have the confidence that they will be immediately alerted when their baby wakes up and needs them.

Furthermore, having a baby monitor is especially helpful at night when your baby has a different room than their parents and they cannot easily hear their baby’s cries through the walls.

Parents can have the option of using an audio baby monitor where they can hear their baby or a video baby monitor where they can view their baby through the screen of the parent unit.

However, even though parents purchase baby monitors for safety, these devices should not be the cause of security problems. There has been news from all over where other people were able to listen in on a family and spy on them through their baby monitors.

There are instances when these baby monitors, especially those that are Wi-Fi-enabled, were hacked by people and used the device to communicate and spy on a family through the webcam.

Tips on How to Make Your Baby Monitors Safety

After knowing that even baby monitors can be susceptible to interference and even strangers spying in on you, you should be pickier in choosing and using your baby monitor. Here are a few tips to have a baby monitor that is safe for your baby and your whole family:

Choose a model that has a security feature

There are numerous baby monitor brands that have security features to provide safety for parents and their babies. Audio monitors that have and encryption feature like the Willcare Digital Audio Monitor, Philips Avent SCD630/37 and VTech DM111 Safe & Sound Digital Audio Baby Monitor are a great choice.

These devices make sure that the transmission between you and your baby will not be heard by other radio users.

Older audio baby monitors can easily receive interference from outside radio users and vice-versa. There are many cases when people can hear the transmission from a baby monitor when they tune into a specific radio channel.

To prevent this from happening, choose a newer audio baby monitor that has security and encryption feature.

Set-up your baby monitor’s password

Video baby monitors that can connect to the internet, especially those that send video to your smartphones are the most susceptible to hacking. This is why it is important that you immediately set-up a very secure password for your baby monitor and your phone’s application as well.

Researches regarding this baby monitor hackings show that people from across the globe were able to view and listen in on the baby monitors of families that are from various countries. Most parents tend to forget setting up a secure password and simply use the username and password that came with their device upon purchase, thinking that this is already safe.

This is one of the biggest mistakes in making your baby monitor safe since hackers can easily identify your username and access your password. Choose a password that is unique and hard to identify to make your baby monitor safe as possible.

Set-up your Wi-Fi password

In addition to picking a secure password for your baby monitor, placing a secure password on your Wi-Fi is also a must. Even if you secure your baby monitor’s password but your Wi-Fi connection can easily be connected, this will defeat the purpose of making your family safe.

Technology savvy individuals suggest that you use a WPA2 password setting instead of WEP since this can still be easily hacked and accessed.

Even though a WEP security may sound safe, there is a bug that deals with the encryption making it an easy target for hacking. So, a word of advice, do not use WEP and especially do not leave your Wi-Fi password open.

Check if your webcam has a password

There are new webcam models that will enable users to place a password before they can be used. If your webcam supports this feature, use this as well and place a password.

By placing a password on your webcam, outsiders cannot easily use it to spy on your family. This will provide another layer of security since only the devices that are able to put in the webcam’s password will be the only ones to access it.

What are the Safest Baby Monitors?

After knowing the security steps that you should take when using a baby monitor, you should apply these as soon as possible to keep your family safe from outsiders. However, if you are still looking for a baby monitor, we recommend the following for their security and safety features:

VTech Safe & Sound Digital Video Monitor

This video monitor has a full-color parent monitor and a two-way intercom. It has a digital transmission feature that prevents system hacking.

Summer Infant Digital Video Baby Monitor

This model does not use a Wi-Fi connection to transmit video images from the camera to the parent unit. Furthermore, it has a digital monitor system that makes it not only easy to install but inaccessible to outsiders as well.

iBaby Video Monitor M6S

With its high 1080p high definition video resolution, the iBaby Video Monitor lets you watch and monitor your baby clearly. In terms of safety, this model boasts of a military-level security which makes it a top-rate safe device for families.

Taking care of your baby means that you should know the pros and cons of each device and gadget that you use for them. When it comes to baby monitors, the answer is not by doing away with them completely but knowing how to make them secure.